Human Action

What have been the major contributors to your success?

When I just started to get interested in controlling my income, it was very scary and overwhelming, and the thought of actually having success was just foreign to me.

See, my dad was his own boss. He was an attorney and for 35 years he had his own practice of one. When I started university he told me that if there was one piece of advice he could give me it would be to never be my own boss.

It took a major shift in my mindset for me to get the courage to go against his advice. The major contributors have been:

Thinking in gradual increments: it’s really easy to get caught on people who are making millions, or are doing much better than you, and think “I’m never going to get there”. And yeah, nobody goes from 0 to a million in a day or a month. Setting realistic, gradual goals is key to maintaining belief and motivation.
Patience: understanding that it could, and probably will, take time is so important because then in the beginning you have the peace of mind of just learning with no pressure – you’re not expecting to succeed.
Persistence: that goes hand in hand with patience. Because it doesn’t really get you anywhere if you wait patiently for success to just come. You have to put in the work, consistently, day in day out, even when you feel like you’re talking to yourself, and as long as you do it right and put your heart in it, success will come.

This can all be summed up as having the right mindset. Once you have the right mindset, even if you fail your first attempt eventually you’ll succeed.

Hope that helps.

Jon

Are People Who Don’t Have Children Financially Better Off Than Parents

Obviously, the answer is yes. There is no way to justify having children from a financial perspective, unless you’re going to monetise those children in some way. Some people do that, honestly I find that sick.

But the question is what do you want from this life. We only have, if we’re lucky, 80 or 90 years on this world. You want to make those years count. I bet there are many people who are childless who have lived a very full and rewarding life. Good on them.

For me, personally, I feel that having our daughter in my life has given me a sense of humility, of commitment and a driver to demand of myself what I’m asking of her.

I want her to be the best she can be. And when I show her that and acknowledge it to myself, I understand that I should want myself to be the best version of me possible.

Hope that helps.

Jon

How is your retirement preparation paying off?

The truth is I’m not preparing for retirement.

I’m being made by my government to put some money aside for it, but if it were up to me I wouldn’t even do that.

I’m not preparing for retirement because I don’t plan on retiring. I don’t think very many people in my generation will retire.

It might sound dystopian, and sure there is that element of it that it’s pretty much impossible to save for a comfortable retirement nowadays.

But there’s another element to it. The host of a podcast that I really like said something on one of his recent shows that really resonated with me. He encouraged listeners to find something that they do not want to retire from.

I mean, who said we ever needed to retire? You need to retire if you work at a factory and you can’t meet the physical requirements of that job anymore, or if you’re a trucker.

But if you’re doing something that you love doing, and you can still make money doing it, and you can still physically and mentally cope – why would you ever want to stop? Do it!

I’d suggest to anyone to rid themselves of the burden of worrying about whether they’ll have enough to sustain their quality of life once they decide to stop being productive.

If you’re 30 you still have 40 more years to find that thing that you love that you can make money doing.

If you’re 50 you still have 20 years – think of what you can accomplish in 20 years!

Even if you’re 60, you still have a full decade to find it and learn how to do it.

Even if you retire tomorrow, you can still learn.

Stop worrying about retirement and whether you’ve saved enough. Invest in yourself now so that you find something you love doing so much, you’ll never want to retire.

Hope that helps.

Jon

Retiring Early – Then what?

I’ll tackle the FIRE movement and why I wouldn’t recommend to people to pursue it in a later post, but I was asked what don’t they tell you about retiring early.

Well, it’s the “then what?” bit that they never talk about isn’t it?

Many people, if they’re unhappy in life, tend to focus on one thing – say, their job – and put all of their unhappiness on that.

When I decided to stop following my religion, my dad – who did that himself years before I did – told me not to think that this alone will now solve whatever unhappiness I have in my life.

it might make the circumstances a bit better, but you have to find what truly makes you unhappy, and it’s rarely what you initially think it is, and deal with that.

There’s a great podcast I listen to about retiring early that I highly recommend, the host sold a startup company and retired in his 20s and, well, I’ll let you hear for yourself what happened next.

Hope that helps

Jon

How do you prioritise lifestyle vs. work?

I guess that’s a really subjective question. Over 10 years I came across colleagues who were all about the next promotion and were all over the work thing, being first in the office and last out. If that sounds like fun to you – more power to you I say.

I also came across people who loved partying. I had a colleague who was married and told me he loved work drinks where he could party on his own and not worry about his partner…

For me, I’m all about the family. Work, even at times that I really like doing it, is just that thing that puts food on our table and allows us to spend quality time together doing things we enjoy.

For me, it’s less about how do you prioritise and more about what do you prioritise, and then keep your focus on that.

Hope that helps

Jon

I want to quit my job and pursue my dream. How can I gain enough courage to send in my resignation letter?

It seems that more and more people understand that the model by which you have a job that you hate but it puts food on the table, because following your dreams isn’t a feasible option, is going away.

Nowadays, you can find something that you’d really enjoy doing, and make good money doing it. As one of the greatest motivators of our time, Jason Stapleton, says – the are $100 million with your name on it every year that the global economy wouldn’t even feel that you gained. More and more people are starting to get that.

But while I would strongly encourage anyone to go at it themselves, I’m not sure I would quit my job and then pursue my dreams.

First, I would take the time to study my options, explore what possibilities there are (and there are loads) to afford whatever it is that your dream is.

Then start doing it while still working. You don’t have to jump straight in, you can dip your feet in the water. There’s almost no legitimate way you can stop working and start replacing that income the next day.

At some point, hopefully, you’ll get to a stage where you’re making enough money to turn your side hustle into your career. Good luck!

hope that helps

Jon

Is 28 too old to change career?

I was asked this question, and I think it’s really relevant and reflective of this generation for whom going to university was almost a given – it’s just what you do – and so they went and got a degree, then went on to a career chosen at 21.

At 21 you’re still very, very young. You’re just barely an adult, especially with the current infantilising education system. You’re a very different person already at 25, and the choices you made 4 years earlier might not be so relevant anymore.

And just think about it, at 28 you still have probably (at least) 40 years of work ahead of you. It’d be mad to think that at that point you’re locked in for longer than what you’ve actually lived for.

Even 40 isn’t too old.

Even 50.

Whenever you feel you need to change careers, that’s the right time.

The only thing I would say is while you’re still doing your current job, take the time to figure out what it is you want to do and start learning skills to facilitate it. In this day in age, it is super easy.

And pat yourself on the back. It’s not easy to admit it to yourself that what you’re doing isn’t working out for you, for whatever reason.

If you were 20 years old again, what would you do differently?

I was asked this question recently, and although it’s not something I’d very much recommend to do, I have been thinking about it. What I could have done differently, if only I had known what I now know.

That’s really a futile effort and a fool’s errand. You really gain nothing from this exercise, because even if you think “I wish I had caught that trend before it became big”, that thought isn’t what’s going to help catch the next trend.

It’s more of a philosophical drill, it can’t help me but maybe it can help a hypothetical current 20 year old me? I hope so.

So looking back, if I could go back to being 20, I probably would not have gone to university. Instead, I would have invested in doing some computer science courses and building my skills to set up my own online business.

I would have worked on myself mentally to instil the belief that I can do it. That, to paraphrase that boring investment advice disclosure, past failures do not indicate future performance. I know now that you can re-invent yourself at any point in life. I wish somebody had told me that back then, when there wasn’t that much to re-invent.

However, the big problem is that truthfully, even knowing what I know now it’s unlikely that at 20 I would have had the maturity, self discipline and vision to undertake that. It’s unlikely I would have had the faith in myself and someone else to believe that it is possible.

The key message for me to anyone who’s 20 would be to not stress over it. Leaving aside illegal activity, nothing that you do at 20 is irreversible. Do what you feel is the right thing for your future. You can always change later.

Hope that helps

Jon